Listen well! This is a tale delivered to us from above, so do not let memory faulter and corrupt the retelling.
In the realm high above, before the gods were born, there was only chaos, the elements, and the Mother of the First. She was a collector of a hoard of rocks, for that was the only thing to be collected back then. In the sunlight she flew out of her burrow to find more stones to gather, and each night she sat upon her hoard of rocks like a clutch of eggs.
Among the endless minerals and treasures in her hoard, there were geodes, and inside those geodes were the infant gods. When collected together and warmed by the soft underbelly of the Mother of the First, the gods began to wake.
First to break free was Sbybias, the endless serpent, who still spills forth as an infant from his egg to this day. Second was Brythraxious, the honourable king and first among dragons, may he rest in peace. Third to hatch was Kathonia, our blessed mother of burrows, and protector of the small. Fourth to hatch was Ysgyhey, god of metal, who refined the sand into stars with his forge. Fifth to hatch was Crorbed, god of darkness, waters, and winter, who–
“Can we skip this part?”
“This is important! The hatching order defines the relative ages of the gods, and therefore the lineage of respect and responsibility among these beings.”
“Is Crorbed a part of this story?”
“Not directly.”
“Then skip ahead to Scykera.”
“…Fine”
The twelfth to hatch was Scykera, the fragile goddess of hope, warmth, and freedom. She was a sickly child, cursed to always linger on the brink of death during the coldest night of the year, only to be pulled back to life by the tears of the Mother. She mourned each death like it was the first, with the desperate hope that it would not be the last.
For the fear that she would lose her beloved child, the Mother of the First declared that anyone who could find a way to keep Scykera alive through the winter would be granted whatever they wished to have.
Ysgyhey tried to keep her warm by the hearth, his grand bellows blasting the air with heat, but even a fire hot enough to evaporate steel could not pierce the chill that surrounded her.
Brythraxious tried to keep her warm by surrounding her with dragon-fire, and while it did manage to bring colour to her pale white cheeks, eventually he ran out of breath, and in the moment he stopped to breathe in again, the cold overtook her worse than ever before.
Nobody could imagine defeating a chill that neither Ysgyhey nor Brythraxious could burn away. None except for Anathrys, the stubborn trickster.
Anathrys had with him his three greatest charms; his crown of forgetfulness, his pendant of repetition, and his sack of endless capacity. First he held his pendant up to the sun, focusing the light into his sack. In seconds, the sack was filled with light, which spilled out the top.
The light of the sun would not be warm enough on its own though. To wrap around Scykera and surround her with that warmth right to her core, he needed to spin the sunlight into a thread, and weave the thread into a cloak. As stubborn as he was, even Anathrys did not have the patience or skill to weave an infinite thread, so he did as tricksters always do, and made someone else do the job for him.
He came to a sprite, and offered it as much gold as it could carry in exchange for just one inch of winding and weaving of the sunlight. The sprite agreed, and in no time it had finished; for such things take no time in the presence of the pendant of repetition, but before it could be paid, Anathrys wiped both of their memories with the crown of forgetfulness, and made the offer again.
After endless lifetimes of work, the cloak was finished in an instant. While rolled up, it fit beneath Anathrys’ arm, but unfurled it would wrap around Sbybias’ endless body.
Anathrys presented the gift to Scykera and the Mother, and they accepted the gift in great joy. Indeed, the cloak seemed to work perfectly, as that winter Scykera was still warm and smiling through even the darkest nights. Her daughter’s curse defeated, the Mother offered to Anathrys a gift of whatever he wished to have.
Anathrys said that what he wanted above all else was to be a god himself, and for Scykera to be his bride. The Mother agreed, for she had given her word. Scykera objected, but she could not defy her mother, and everyone thought that Anathrys deserved his reward. Everyone that is, except for Kathonia.
Kathonia says to us “No man or woman can take claim of another, not father of son, nor mother of daughter, or husband of wife. To own another person is to keep them from their freest self.”
So of course, to bind Scykera, goddess of freedom, to the service of another god, would be to rekindle the very curse that bound her before. Indeed her curse was not only one of winter pulling her away from warmth, but of the night taking away her freedom as the Mother of the First loomed ever closer. She was not warm through the winter just because the cloak was warm, it was also because it kept her hidden.
Kathonia had to act, for if Scykera and Anathrys were to marry, then the balance of the gods and their domains would be upset. Remember, this was still a time before calamities, and the wedding of these two gods would be the cause of the first.
The wedding of gods had occurred before, of course. Crorbed had married Deitbleyf, and together they made Mym and Mwny, demigods of the giant and the deep. Such a union was natural and mutual, a respectable thing that brought strength to their domains.
Protecting the weak and small comes naturally to Kathonia, for such is her domain. Looking within herself, she formed a plan to rescue Scykera and keep her from ever falling into the clutches of the Mother or Anathrys. First, she had to delay the wedding.
Delaying a wedding is a difficult thing to do from the outside, so first she inserted herself as the maid of honour. This was not difficult, as she and Scykera had long been very good friends. Though Anathrys objected to his rival having a place at his wedding, Kathonia and Scykera were able to convince the Mother that this was also the last time they would be a pair before the marriage.
Kathonia made sure to tell Scykera exactly what her plan was. It would not be enough to object to the wedding, or take Scykera away. Anathrys was stubborn, and the Mother had given her word. To keep her alive and happy, Scykera would have to be hidden in such a way that neither could ever find her again.
First, on the night before the wedding, Kathonia snuck Scykera out of the first realm. Then, she took the cloak of sunlight, and cut it into two pieces. No matter how it was cut, the cloak would always be endless on both sides, so Kathonia gave one half back to Scykera, and shredded the other half apart with her claws. Each fragment torn away was its own endless fragment of sunlight, and as she shredded it apart, she coated the earthly realm in these discarded parts, burying the entire world in the heavenly light of the sun.
Even a fragment of endless power is a tremendous thing to have, and quickly all the creatures great and small of our realm took the light as a gift from Kathonia, and carried it with them to all the corners of the world. When Kathonia was done, every being of the earth, the sky, and the sea wore a cloak just like Scykera’s, and so to find her Anathrys would have to check every being on the planet. And as each new being is born, Kathonia tears a new scrap of cloak to wrap them in, so that as long as life continues to exist in our world, Scykera will be hidden in the crowd.
However, this also meant that Kathonia could no longer find her dearest friend, and instead she saw her in every creature that lived and breathed. Her love for her friend extended to everything that held the cloak, and so she loves all of us.
The end.
“What? That didn’t explain anything! What does that have to do with magic? I’ve never seen a cloak of light, where did they all go?”
“All very insightful questions, Dut. Magic is what we call the connection all creatures have to the first realm, and that connection is through the light of the cloak that wraps around every being. We can’t see it for the same reason we cannot see the air around us, or smell the scent of our own nostrils, when something is always with you, you do not sense it, you sense everything else through it.”
“Can you give me a straight answer on how magic works then?”
“Of course. Magic is taking the warmth, and the energy that suffuses and surrounds all living things, and reweaving the cloak into new forms. It is that gift of light that grants us access to magic.”
“So, what does it mean, that nobody born in the last ten clutches can do magic?”
“That is perhaps the greatest question of our time. Perhaps Anathrys has died, and Scykera and Kathonia have reunited, so we no longer need to hide her.”
“Or maybe Kathonia died, and now we have to fend for ourselves without her gifts.”
“Maybe. But I believe that she is still protecting us in her own way. Just look at the gifts we have gotten since the adventurers came to destroy us.”
He put a hand in Bow’s hair, who closed the book and smiled.
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